


Tell Them It Won't Be Long...

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46'\-C [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (this gets real messed up real fast folks), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, Memory Loss, Mental Torture, Physical Torture, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, Stress, Torture, WARNING: POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING MATERIAL, shaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Stanford wakes up to find that Bill and Stanley have beentalkingwith each other while he’s been out.Comparing notes.He is not happy about this, to say the least.Oh, and apparentlyBill made a deal with Stanley...





	Tell Them It Won't Be Long...

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Tell Them It Won’t Be Long...  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Stanford wakes up to find that Bill and Stanley have been _talking_ with each other while he’s been out. _Comparing notes._ He is not happy about this, to say the least.
> 
> Oh, and apparently _Bill made a deal with Stanley_...  
>  Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: Yeahhh… Ford is not a happy puppy in this one.

\---

Stanford woke up slowly, feeling a bit groggy and trying to remember why he was sitting on the floor.

He appreciated the blanket, though. Nice and fluffy and warm.

At least he didn’t panic upon waking up in unfamiliar surroundings anymore. He’d acclimated enough to being back in his home dimension that… well, he knew he was safe, back in his home dimension. No more rude awakenings.

...and this fact was spoiled almost immediately when, upon stretching slightly and looking around, he realized that (1) he was holding his weapon of choice in his hand, (2) he was sitting on the floor in Stanley’s bedroom in the Shack, and (3) he remembered _why_ he was in there.

He looked around the room, and Stanley hadn’t taken watch in a nearby chair.

He looked to the bed, and Bill wasn’t in it.

He was fully awake, on his feet, and out the bedroom door in less than a second.

\---

“STANLEY!” Ford shouted, sprinting down the hallway and into the living room at a full tear. “STANLEY!! BILL IS--”

He came to a screeching halt -- _literally_ , he skidded across the floor at least a few feet despite the treads on his boots that were designed to do exactly _not_ that, blast it! -- when he saw a (still) very human-looking Bill Cipher sitting in the kitchen, in a chair at the table, hands curled around a mug of something steaming warm, with Stanley casually leaning back against the counter with a mug of something of his own in his hand.

They both looked up at him like they had no idea what could possibly be wrong with this entire situation.

For a moment, inanely -- and he swore later that he must’ve been on the verge of a psychotic break at the time -- Ford wondered when Bill had taken the eyepatch off, and why on earth he had even been wearing an eyepatch in the first place, with both his eyes seeming to be perfectly functional in this form.

“Ford?” “Sixer?” they asked in unison, and for a dizzying moment, Ford couldn’t sort out who had said which.

“What’s wrong?” they both asked, in unison, in _stereo_ , and something in Ford froze, while his stomach tried to drop to his knees and a bile-like rage suddenly burned at the back of his throat.

He whipped his gun up to point it at Bill’s blue-haired head.

“ _STOP THAT_ ,” he hissed out at Bill. “ _STOP THAT **RIGHT NOW**_.”

Bill had the utter audacity to look _confused_ at him. He opened his mouth to speak, then got a bit of a frown and closed it again.

He turned his head and glanced back at Stanley.

“Uh, you wanna tell him?” Bill said to Stanley. “If I try and talk, he’ll probably shoot-- me… uh…” Bill trailed off, looking a little embarrassed. “Right.”

Stanley looked tired for a moment, and a little embarrassed himself. He lifted his free hand -- the one not holding the mug -- up to rub the back of his neck.

Ford glanced between the two of them as he held his gun out two-handed, keeping it trained on Bill, his shoulders only getting more tense.

“Right. Uh. Yeahhh…” Stanley said, looking away from them both. He cleared his throat embarrassedly. “Ford? It’s… kind of really not his fault.”

Ford… really did not know where this was going, but he was already sure that he wasn’t going to like it. “Oh? What isn’t his fault, Stanley?” he started out in mostly even tones, before starting to lose it. “The fact that he’s _mimicking_ you? On purpose? Is _that_ what is not his fault, Stanley?!” he finished in rising tones as they both -- _both?!?_ \-- winced at his words.

“Yeah. Um. So,” Stan said, sounding ever more uncomfortable all the while. “You’ve been out for, uh, about…” Stan glanced at the watch on his wrist, “...three hours? Geez,” he said with a small shake of his head, like he hadn’t even noticed the time passing. He looked up at Ford. “Anyway, we’ve been talking and, uh…” Stan stopped for a moment as Ford twitched.

“You’ve been talking,” Ford said in a monotone voice.

“Uh, yeah,” said Stanley.

“...with Bill,” Ford said.

“Uh… yeah?” Stanley.

“......for three hours,” Ford said, and he swore he could feel his blood pressure rising.

“Uh, yeah,” Stan said, as though he thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, to worry about there, _at all_.

“You’ve been talking with Bill Cipher for _three hours_ ,” Ford repeated, and he was having a really hard time not pulling the trigger shooting the pair of them now.

“Uh, yeah Ford, that’s what I--”

“You’ve been having a conversation with _Bill Cipher_ ,” Ford began ponderously. “Master of the mind.” He took in a breath. “ _Dream demon_.” He swore he felt his blood pressure go up another notch. “The _insane_ triangle who tried to _take over our dimension and kill us all_ ,” he felt his breath hitch and the gun in his hands shake, “ _That_ is who you’ve been standing here and drinking who-knows-what with--”

“Coffee.”

“--What?” Ford said, feeling derailed.

“It’s coffee,” Stanley told him, and for a moment, Ford wondered if _this_ was what going stark raving mad felt like.

...Luckily, the rage came back quickly.

Ford pulled in a deep breath. It didn’t help.

“ _Bill Cipher_ is who you have been standing here, _drinking coffee with_ , and talking to for _**three hours straight??!?**_ ” he demanded in outrage.

“Uh, yeah?” Stan said.

“ _ **WHILE I WAS ASLEEP?!?**_ ”

“Uh, yeah,” Stan said, leaning back slightly and taking a sip of what was apparently coffee out of his mug.

Ford felt his eye twitch.

“Well, it looked like you needed it,” Bill said, looking down and poking a finger at his own mug, forcing Ford to pull his gaze away from Stanley and latch it onto Bill. “Kinda sounds like you could use some more of it, too. The sleep, I mean,” he said, tilting his head slightly to look up at Ford again.

Ford stood there and stared at him.

...He only realized he’d dropped his aim to the floor at some point during this exchange, after he’d snapped it back up to level to draw a bead on Cipher again.

Ford clenched his jaw.

“What, I can’t talk to people now?” Bill muttered, sounding annoyed, of all things.

“No,” said Ford. “No, you cannot _’just talk to people’_ , Bill.” Ford gritted his teeth. “You _never_ **‘just’** talk to people.” He was shaking and couldn’t stop. “You always have an angle, a direction, something you are trying to exploit. _Always_.”

“Ford--”

“--No,” Ford cut his brother off, not looking away from Cipher. “I don’t know _why_ you’re--” He had to stop for a moment, his breathing unstable enough that he had to catch three breaths before continuing. “Why you continue to _insist_ on acting like--” his breathing went unsteady again, and he was unable to keep the wobble out of his voice any longer. “On acting like Stanley,” he forced himself to continue on, “But it’s _not_ going to--”

“He remembers the boat, Ford,” he heard Stanley say.

Ford couldn’t help but turn his head towards his brother, even as he kept his gun trained on Bill.

“What?” Ford said, feeling a bit like he’d just been sideswiped again, and not quite knowing why.

“ **He remembers the boat** ,” Stanley repeated, with a tone that somehow added weight to his words, and Ford just… didn’t understand what Stanley was trying to tell him.

“What?” Ford said again, blankly, then frowned at his brother. “Stanley, what does _that_ have to do with--” He hesitated a moment, then snapped his head around to glare at Bill. “Wait, you were watching us when we were _kids?_ ” Ford said with no small irritation, feeling vastly offended, and more than a little alarmed, because how long had Bill been planning to--?

“Oh, for the love of Paul Bunyan,” Bill said with Stanley levels of exasperation, rolling his eyes to look up at the ceiling. “We’re not talking about--” Bill grimaced, then seemed to start again. “He’s not talking about the _Stan o’ War_ , he’s talking about the…” Bill grimaced for a moment. “Well, all right, I mean, I remember that one _too_ , but--”

Ford stared at Bill as he rambled on, because... Bill never rambled on like this. He never...

“--it wasn’t some miracle or anything, Ford,” Stanley cut in, “is what we’re trying to say. We’ve been comparing notes, and--”

“Comparing notes,” Ford echoed back dully.

“ _Yes_ , Sixer,” Bill said with exasperation, again-and-still. “You know, that thing people who _aren’t_ nerds do when they need a second opinion, that involves _actually talking to other people?_ ” and something about what he’d said, or the way he’d said it, had Ford staring at them both numbly, feeling his hands drop slowly out of level, the gun moving out of alignment with Bill’s head.

“Hey,” Stanley said, frowning at Bill for the first time since Ford had seen them interacting together in the kitchen.

“What!” Bill said, looking up at Stanley. “He’s being dumb on purpose!” he exclaimed, gesturing at Ford. “He’s not _stupid_ ,” Bill told Stanley with no small irritation. “He _has_ to know--”

“He’s not dumb, he just thinks differently. Genius nerd, remember?” Stanley said, calmly defending him, and when Bill made a disgruntled noise and grumbled out, “ _Dumb_ genius nerd, maybe,” dropping his chin onto the palm of his hand, acting as if what Stan had just said was a perfectly logical statement that had somehow lost him the argument…

Ford felt faint watching and listening to the two of them. His gun was pointed at the floor again, almost dangling from his hands.

And when the next almost-random conscious-level thought that flitted across Ford’s mind was, ‘ _Is this what the inside of Lee’s head sounds like?_ ’, he felt himself go pale.

“ _...Stanley?_ ” Ford asked weakly. He remembered this exact same feeling from a dimension he’d once been in, and it hadn’t been a good one. He’d been dangling over the edge of an abyss with a fraying rope around his waist and no handholds in sight, staring down at an unstable portal that led who-knows-where and would probably spit him out in more pieces than he could count, vaguely wondering ‘ _exactly how could things possibly get any worse?’_ , the last time he’d felt this way. “What…”

He stopped when both Stanley and Bill looked up at him _at the same time_ , and only a moment later did Bill pull a slight face, look away, and rub a hand over the bridge of his nose.

...Oh, no. No, no, no.

“Yeah, so,” Stanley said, “Turns out getting all my memories back wasn’t some miracle after all. I had some help.” Ford watched Stanley glance over at Bill. “More help.” He looked off to the side. “With everything.” He got a sort of anemic-looking smile. “Heh.”

Ford turned slowly to look back at Bill.

“...Stanley?” Ford said quietly, staring.

“Haha, **no** ,” Bill said flatly and rather forcefully, as he grimly stared down at his coffee mug. He lifted it up with both hands a bit, like he was concentrating on looking inside it. ...Bill was more using it as a prop to avoid looking at him, Ford knew; that was _Stanley_ -behavior, Ford _recognized_ it, Bill never did that; he’d never seen Bill do it.

“No,” Bill repeated, almost as if he were talking to the coffee cup he was holding. “It’s not quite that bad. I _know_ I’m not him. Gotta a full copy of his memories in my head, though, along with everything else. Annoying as heck, right?” He got a tentative smile for a moment, then lifted his head and seemed to brighten up all of a sudden, and he let out a full-on laugh even as he continued to avoid looking over at Ford. “I’ve gotta say, having fifty-eight years of human to lean on sure has helped a lot in understanding all your stupid social conventions, though!” he let out in pure Bill Cipher fashion, with a grin to match.

Ford let out a breath and felt his shoulders slump. ...and then determined that he must be well and truly insane at this point, because hearing Bill Cipher talk and act like Bill Cipher and feeling _relieved_ that this was the case was clearly an impending sign of needing incarceration at a mental institution at some point in the near future, and possibly some of the really good drugs as well, situation notwithstanding.

“...This is truly terrible, isn’t it,” Ford said, walking over to the kitchen table and setting down his gun, with a small smile gracing his face all the while. ...Yes, he was clearly insane. It _was_ completely terrible, and yet Ford couldn’t _help_ but smile a little. Because. Two Stanleys. ...almost. And together in the same dimension without anything destabilizing and collapsing in on them, no less. Axolotl help them all. As if _one_ Stanley wasn’t already enough. “Truly, truly terrible.” He put his hand on the back of the nearest chair, thinking of taking a seat in it.

“Wellllll…” Bill trailed off, before lifting his mug to his face. “Not _yet_.” He took a sip.

Ford paused in place and looked over at him. “Not… _yet?_ ” he asked, slowly straightening again.

“Mm,” said Bill, putting down his mug. He and Stanley shared a look with each other, then both looked over at Ford. “See, the thing is… how do I put this...” Bill began.

“My memories are more immediate in his head right now,” Stanley took over telling him.

“Not like they overwrote anything,” Bill told him. “Not like anything’s _gone away_.” He propped his chin in his hand and tapped a finger against the side of his face. “It’s all still _here_ ,” Bill told him. “It’s just… gonna take me a bit of time to sort it all out. Properly.”

“‘Properly’?” Ford echoed almost immediately, because what in the world did _that_ mean? But with the long look Stanley was giving Bill -- and the way Bill more or less ignored the question, avoided Stanley’s direct look, and gave them both the barest of shrugs as a ’response’ -- Ford had a feeling that pushing in that direction for an explanation would probably not go over well at this particular juncture.

So Ford tried another tack instead -- one which, in all honesty, probably should have been the first question that he should have asked.

“...How _long_ is it going to take for you to ‘sort it all out’?” Ford said, fully aware that he was letting himself be led along here and, despite this, still asked the next and most obviously leading question anyway.

Bill shrugged. “Could be weeks. Days.” He grimaced and looked away. “...An hour.”

Ford swallowed.

“Years,” his brother put out there, which had Bill eyeing Stanley sidelong with no small amount of skepticism. Bill looked away quickly, though, when he saw the look Stanley was giving him -- the same look Stanley had been giving him since the topic was first broached.

“And what happens then?” Ford asked with as little weight as he could, almost certain he knew the answer to this already, and not really _wanting_ to hear it, but needing to hear it anyway.

Bill looked tired. He sighed, still not looking at him. “Probably something truly, truly terrible,” Bill told him.

“Or, y’know, nothing at all,” Stanley said lightly, taking another sip from his coffee mug and not looking at either of them.

Bill let out a snort. “ _Right,_ ” he said sarcastically, staring down at his mug. He shook his head. “Pretty sure we’re all staring down Weirdmageddon 2.0, here.”

Ford felt like his blood had turned to ice. He looked at Stanley. He looked at Bill.

Neither of them said anything. Neither of them were looking at him.

Ford suddenly and unaccountably felt a swiftly-rising, horrible, and terrible anger. And then it burned itself out again just as quickly, horror filling its place.

Because of course. Of course. _Of course_ Bill had planned for this eventuality. He’d had a trillion years to do it, after all. So why not have a contingency plan for the unlikely situation where he was killed -- for _every_ very unlikely situation, no matter how remote a possibility it ever was or would be? _Why not_ set things up so that, even if things turned out the way that they had, that he would come back with the all memories of Ford’s brother inside himself, intact, so that he would have _full knowledge_ of exactly what Stanley -- the man who had defeated him -- was and was not capable of, so that he would then be capable of manipulating him accordingly? Why _not_ do so, so that he could _use those memories and mannerisms against Ford himself_ at the worst possible opportunity, to trip him up and make him choke, make him hesitate for that crucial split-second? To make him wish-- to hope-- to think--

Ford knew he should pick his gun back up off the table again and shoot Bill in the head with it. Bill and Stanley were both inside the barrier. The barrier was almost definitely shorting out any and every type of connection that could possibly exist between them; shooting Bill now would likely not cause any repercussions for Stanley through the anchor-burn that they both shared. ...He just couldn’t summon the energy to actually _do_ it.

...in part because the argument borne of his paranoia rapidly fell apart, unable to hold up under its own weight. Because why _would_ Bill do this? What twisted sort of revenge scheme could he possibly have going on, here? Because no matter what Bill might or might not be planning was beside the point when it came to this: Bill was _completely_ vulnerable right then, and Stanley himself was willing to die if it meant killing Bill, still. That was _far_ too much risk to Bill for the current situation to be going completely according to Bill’s plans, wasn’t it? Bill wasn’t one to put himself in jeopardy like that, and he’d self-admittedly have to _take time_ to _sort out_ everything that was in his head to become _completely himself_ , again. A second Weirdmageddon could be stopped simply by killing or containing Bill as he was just then, and Ford could think of several ways that might be possible without breaking a sweat… so long as he didn’t care about what might happen to Stanley in the process. Ford refused to think of what the worst of worst-case scenarios might mean.

He didn’t want to think of the best worst-case scenario, either, but it occurred to him that killing Bill might be sentencing Stanley to live out the rest of his life never setting foot outside the Shack -- and its mystical barrier -- again. Saving the world from a second Weirdmageddon could very well condemn his brother to never again entering it.

But that was the thing that really struck Ford here -- right here and now, it looked like _Bill didn’t want Weirdmageddon to happen again_. Bill wasn’t lying about that -- Ford could tell. Because in retrospect, looking back on things, and kicking himself for being so stupid as he did so, it was embarrassingly easy for Ford to tell when Bill had been lying to him, and when he had not. As a dream demon, Bill couldn’t lie **directly** to people about something, but he was perfectly capable of deceit -- he could leave out key pieces of information, and answering a question with a question didn’t seem to count in this regard.

Keeping those two things in mind, and knowing when to look for them… and without the self-inflicted blindness that Bill’s flattery had impressed upon him, which had marred his own otherwise-rational thought processes... Bill wasn’t exactly a skillful liar. Bill’s emotions always matched what he _really_ thought, and while he could use that to his advantage as well, doing so led to some rather obvious gaps and interrupts in his speech when coupled with the misdirects and questions-answered-with-questions, small but noticeable periods of time when his emotions had seemed to fluctuate wildly as he tried to tie together misleading statement to misleading statement.

...Then again, that obviousness could have been patched over at least in part by having gained the experience of Stanley’s fairly well-developed lying conman skills from Stanley’s memories. Ford roused himself as he realized that he should probably ask the question outright, just to be certain. He knew all his brother’s tells, and all of Bill’s. If he asked while Bill was still clearly off-balance...

“Bill, don’t you want Weirdmageddon to happen again?” Ford asked him.

Bill twisted his head up to stare at his with a half-disgusted, half-horrified look on his face.

“No, of course I don’t--” Bill started in denial, “--want that right now,” he ended with a grimace, looking down in pure disgust at his hands.

Ford pulled in a breath through his nose and and let it out again.

...Well, Bill wasn’t lying.

“Eh, I can live with that,” Stanley said, “ _right now_ ,” he drawled out in a somewhat loaded tone of voice that Ford couldn’t quite parse. Ford stared at his brother, who for some reason was grinning like he’d just won the lottery as he took another sip of coffee from his cup, and Ford was so stunned by the seeming incongruity of it that he almost didn’t catch it when Bill shot Stanley a dirty look.

“What do you want from me,” Bill muttered angrily under his breath at them, dropping his elbows to the table and holding his head in his hands. ”You think I planned for this? I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

Ford frowned at the two of them. ‘ _So, Bill might or might not have planned for this,_ ’ given that he’d posed that as a question, ‘ _but the outcome is uncertain._ ’

So, that begged the question: to what advantage and what purpose might having Stanley’s memories -- _and his weaknesses_ \-- and this horrible… confusion? ...where Bill wasn’t himself enough to even want to further his own plans, really get the insane triangle? Ford could hardly fathom it.

‘ _Focus, Stanford._ ’ What did Bill want? To get free of the Nightmare Realm. --All right, he had that, Axolotl help them all. He wanted… his Weirdmageddon-party? He’d had that, but they’d stopped it -- it certainly hadn’t been ‘never ending’ like Bill had originally intended. ...What else?

What _could_ he gain from Stanley’s memories and experiences, that he might not have been able to get from what he’d already seen? ...An understanding of humans and human society from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in? To-- be able to do something that Stanley had done, or could do, that Bill hadn’t been able to do before? ...Actually, that almost made sense. Stanley had always seemed to understand people and their motivations far better than Ford ever had, and Bill had been very clear about not really understanding human social conventions very well, before this. Could that be a part of it? During the course of this conversation, he had alluded to the fact that Stanley's memories had helped him understand them better now, and Ford could hardly disagree. He _hated_ Bill, and yet…

Ford paused. He hated Bill. And yet, he didn’t currently have the burning desire to shoot him in the face. He didn’t even feel _angry_ with him at the moment. Bill’s mere presence in his house, sitting at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee, should be **grating** on him, and it _wasn’t_ ; at the very least, he should feel outraged on Stanley’s behalf at-minimum, for the fact that Bill had grossly violated his brother’s privacy in stealing a copy of his memories as he had, and yet… he wasn’t.

...Oh, this was dangerous. Whatever this was, he couldn’t let himself fall for it. To let himself play along with Bill’s current almost-easygoing nature for even a second was just inviting trouble in for Cosmic Tea and scones, to say the _least_ , and...

That was when the penny dropped.

The third thing that Bill had wanted…

...had been Ford himself.

And at that thought, Ford choked. Could Bill’s end game here really be… to _actually make Ford **like** him again?!?!?_ That was _absurd!_

Ford suppressed a shudder, because no. No. Ford wasn’t _about_ to fall for _that_ one again. No. Just, _no_.

He took in a breath and steeled himself mentally, girded up all his insides. He told himself adamantly that he was _not_ going to give in to this. He was _not_ going to _fall_ for it. Bill was Bill, and Ford was _not_ going to let Bill trick him into acting or reacting like Bill was Stanley. It wasn’t going to happen. He **refused**.

He would remember Bill Cipher was Bill Cipher, and he would resist it and him with every fiber of his being.

He was _not_ going to be tricked again.

And, in the meantime...

“It isn’t safe for the niblings to be here while he’s here,” Ford told his brother flatly. The rift had been dangerous enough for him to send them off with Stanley while he’d been attempting to contain it; Bill was far worse.

He’d wished he’d thought of it earlier, but he’d been operating on little sleep after a night working in his lab, and that always muddled his thinking these days, he was coming to find. At least he’d thought of it now after having gotten some sleep, however unintentionally...

“No, _really?_ ” Bill said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“We sent the kids away for the duration,” Stanley told him. “They’re staying with Fiddlenerd at McGucket Manor.” He crossed his arms. “Gave him the formula for the barrier; they’re gonna weird-proof the whole thing. Just in case.” Bill snorted at him, at that.

“‘Just in case’,” Bill echoed Stanley, albeit with a very different tone. He dropped his hands and pushed his mug away from him on the table before leaning back in his chair. “Question Mark and Red are staying here,” Bill told him with a sigh. "They’re gonna keep the Shack going in the meantime, doing tours and running the gift shop. They want to stick it out.”

“We managed to convince Melody and Abuelita to go with the kids, though,” Stan added. “So… yeah.”

Ford… didn’t know what to say to all this. Stanley had thought of most everything already, in terms of removing potential hostages and family members from Bill’s immediate vicinity. Ford himself hadn’t been able to do more than think of asking Fiddleford to go down to the basement labs and work on trying to whip up some sort of further restraints or similar, to be able to use on Bill in the meantime, while he himself kept an eye on Cipher after Stanley had finished setting him up in his bedroom. Ford was only now beginning to realize exactly how much of a mess he’d been, having been confronted with the circle’s failure, and how lucky he was that Stanley had been able to step in for him instead, knowing exactly what to do in the moment.

It had happened more than once during their sailing adventures, but somehow it felt different to find that he could still depend on Stanley somewhat to take care of things still, now that they were home.

Now all Ford had to think of was what happened next, without the twin distractions of his lovely grand-niece and nephew visiting, living in the nearby vicinity or playing in the Shack above him.

Instead, he’d need to be devoting all his time to dealing with one Bill Cipher, living on the premises with him and his brother and the man of the Ramirez family, with only a snarky teenager to break the mood now and again during the Shack’s business hours.

...This was going to be a horrible summer.

They stewed in silence for awhile.

“...Can’t believe that Shooting Star tried to get away with calling me ‘Grunkle Bill’,” Bill muttered into his mug, as he pulled it back to him. He nearly upended the mug over his face trying to get the last couple of drops of liquid out of the bottom of it.

“What?” Ford said, looking up, startled and almost affronted.

Bill finished his fruitless endeavor and put down the mug. “ _I know_ ,” Bill said like he was somehow an injured party here, raising his eyes skyward. “Kid’s nuts. Nutterball. Somethin’. Loony bin?” he tried, not seeming to like any adjectival description he’d come up with.

Ford felt offended on his nibling’s behalf. “Don’t be ridiculous!” he told Bill. “She is weird and sweet and you are lucky to have even a _chance_ at--”

Bill cut him a look that stopped him dead in his tracks.

“ _Yes, Sixer,_ ” Bill said, in a voice that sent chills down Ford’s spine. “She is weird, and sweet, and I am _pretty sure that I have nearly killed her at least four times now already,_ ” he told Ford, locking gaze with him.

Ford looked away first.

He clenched his jaw, and felt angry with himself that Bill was apparently having an easier time remembering what he should be treated like than Ford was, and, further, that Bill had the utter gall to _remind him of this_ when his plan was clearly the opposite.

Ford resolved to do better. He _would_ do better. He _would not_ forget. He could not let himself think on what Bill had used to be like, what he had been to him, before he’d finally shown his true colors.

Bill was _not_ his friend.

“I’ll probably try to kill her again,” he heard Bill say. “The last time was even personal. I was mad, I was going to do it. I almost didn’t stop.” The last sounded slightly fainter, like Bill had turned away from him. “I thought about it. I was so close.”

Ford shuddered, closing his eyes. He didn’t want to hear this, but at the same time… he had to. He **needed** to. He had to burn this conversation into the back of his skull. It would remind him of what Bill was really like, how insane, exactly how bad he still was, even now, even with Stanley’s memories in his head. It would help him to remember exactly what and who he was dealing with, here.

“...I almost did it anyway.” The words were coming slower, like Bill had to think about it; it was like he was drawing it out from somewhere, like it was taking time to pull it out, unpack it, to get to the memory in question. “I was going to. Just because I could. To teach you a lesson. ...You liked Pine Tree more, I was pretty sure,” Bill said, and Ford felt dizzy. “Would’ve still had leverage left over, after,” and now Ford felt utterly sick.

“...Why didn’t you,” Ford heard Stanley ask Bill calmly, and Ford’s head shot up, shocked nearly speechless.

He opened his mouth to read Stanley the riot act, but stopped short when he saw how utterly contemplative and relaxed Stanley looked, looking down at Bill. ...and how Bill looked in turn.

It nearly had Ford’s hair standing on end.

Bill was… sitting upright, hands curled around his coffee mug. He was staring straight ahead, off into the middle distance, and he looked… _calm_ , calm and still in a way that Ford couldn’t ever remember seeing him look before. Bill looked calm, and he had a slight thinking frown going on.

“...I don’t know,” he heard Bill say as if he were talking from a great distance, and Ford saw him frown a little more, a little less, a little more again, almost as if he were trying to process what he’d just said. He looked vaguely… _confused_. “I… can’t remember.”

And the last had Ford looking down at Bill, stunned.

“I… know I had a reason,” he heard Bill say slowly. “I just…” Bill’s frown deepened a little more. “It’s just… not _there_.” His fingers twitched around the sides of the mug he was holding, slightly.

There was silence for a moment.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Stanley said in the same tone of voice he’d used before, turning and setting his mug down on the counter behind him. He turned back to Bill, crossing his arms. “You’ll get it back eventually.”

“Mm,” said Bill, closing his eyes.

Ford shot Stanley a look over Bill’s head, because was his brother _really_ just going to leave it at that?! But Stanley leveled a serious look at him and shook his head once, gave him the code for ‘no, don’t speak, not now,’ from their sailing adventures, and...

Ford took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried very hard to trust in his brother to know what he was doing. ...at least until he was able to talk with (read: _yell at_ ) him later, well out of earshot of the person who he’d just received said signal over -- in this case, Bill.

He looked down at Bill, and felt an odd disquiet as he watched Bill seem to come back from wherever he’d gone in his headspace, somehow becoming more present in the room with them again. He saw Bill drop his head slightly and pull in a breath before opening his eyes, let it out again and shift his shoulders slightly like he was recentering himself, loosen his fingers from around the mug.

“Shouldn’t be encouraging Shooting Star to make nice with me, Sixer,” Bill murmured, almost to himself. “Still don’t even understand why you got all angry and, what, ‘betrayed-feeling’ about the portal?” Bill said calmly, lightly, like he was discussing the weather -- except _not_ , because Ford had seen Bill get excited discussing weather patterns before ...tornados and hurricanes especially, but weirdly also the rain. “Can’t imagine she’d be any better about it than you, once I get my mindscape back in proper rearrangement and try to kill her again,” and it didn’t surprise Ford in the least to hear Bill Cipher talk about things like this in this way. And, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he realized that it wasn’t like Stanley’s memories could’ve helped with this, either.

...not when Stan couldn’t even manage a simple ‘I’m sorry’ for ruining someone’s life, let alone dredge up proper feelings of guilt for his more reckless and damaging behavior.

Ford felt a slow-rising anger at the thought, that at the end of this all -- whatever _this_ really was -- Bill would be the culmination of the worst of Stanley and himself, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And for him to bring up the portal _now_ …

Ford managed to hold onto his temper listening to Bill mutter and mull over this, but only barely.

Bill paused, staring down at the mug. “Can’t imagine any of you being any better about it,” Bill murmured, frowning to himself, “Especially when I can’t remember a single reason of my own why I shouldn’t kill her.”

Ford glanced up at Stanley again, sharply, and got another small headshake for his trouble.

Ford firmed his jaw. _Later,_ fine, yes. Clearly, Stanley was currently privy to something else vitally important that was going on with Bill that he did not yet know about.

...Case-in-point, when had Bill ever had memory problems? Back when Bill had been acting as his ‘muse’, he’d practically been a living library, a veritable font of information. And hadn’t both he and Stanley indicated earlier that Bill had _all_ of his memories available to him, both his own and Stanley’s? How could Bill have possibly _misplaced_ a crucial piece of information to his decision-making like that? It didn’t sound as though the memory gun had impacted Bill in the same way as Stanley, if at all.

‘ _Unless_...’

What if it **had** impacted Bill? If it had, and he couldn’t remember…

...if Bill’s _own_ memories had been impacted by what Ford had typed into the gun, then--

Ford pulled in a breath suddenly, feeling his skin go cold, while his mind started racing a parsec per minute.

“Ford…” he heard Stanley say warningly, almost under his breath, but Ford was too mad at the both of them right now to even think of waiting to address this.

“Bill,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “ _Have you **ever** made a deal with Stanley?_ ”

Bill turned his head slowly and looked up at him. “I-- what?” he said, absently rubbing the fingers of his right hand in circles against his right temple.

Ford pulled in another breath, figuratively holding onto his temper with both fists now. “Have you _ever_ \--”

“--Heard you the first time, Sixer,” Bill said, sounding slightly annoyed with him. “Don’t know what you’re so mad about, I’ve never--” he started, then stopped and dropped his gaze. “I’ve--” he began again, and stopped again. “I--” he tried again, for the third time, and Ford couldn’t help but observe that he was leaning his head against his fingers _hard_ now, using his right elbow for support; the pressure he was putting at his temple was far stronger than before, and his frown was getting worse. His expression was beginning to look almost pained, eyes wide and staring.

Stanley straightened, starting to look alarmed.

He opened his mouth to say something, but Ford held up a hand, palm outward.

It stalled Stanley long enough for Bill to start talking again. “I-- made a deal with Stanley in the Fearamid,” Bill said, dropping his right hand to the table, but his fingers were slowly twitching themselves closed, and he was looking agitated as he stared off at nothing Ford could see. “I-- I thought he was _you_ ,” Bill all but choked out, sounding offended at the very idea of having gotten them mixed-up somehow. “I--”

Ford watched Bill’s eyes narrow and track back and forth, watched Bill jerk in place.

“...This isn’t right,” Bill breathed out, straightening up. “I-- There should be _some_ overlap,” he said, twisting his head to the side. “It was the two of us, we were _both_ there and--” His head jerked slightly to the side. “Why can’t I--”

Ford watched coldly as Bill’s head and torso almost seemed to bob slightly from side to side in his chair, turning and moving together in unison as if rigidly attached to each other, his arms slack on the table, his eyes staying fixed focused straight forward in his head. A small part of Ford noted how utterly off-putting it was to watch, how easy it was to tell when Bill was accessing which sets of memories from his behavior, and how eerie it was to learn that there was a direct analog for Bill’s movements as a triangle to human motion patterns.

Ford saw Stanley shift uneasily out of the corner of his eye, as Ford slowly moved his arm forward to lay his hand next to his gun on the table. Ford didn’t take his eyes off of Bill.

“Where is it,” Bill ground out angrily, in a voice full of gravel. His motions became agitated even further. “ _Where is it!_ ” he repeated, even angrier. “I know it’s there; it _has_ to be there! This isn’t--!” He bared his teeth and slammed a fist down into the table.

“I can remember _you_ ,” Bill said suddenly, twisting his head on his neck and looking up at Stanley, his eyes going from unfocused to focused again. “I can remember what _you_ did, as **you** , _being_ you,” Bill said, staring Stanley in the face. He reared his head back slightly, dropping his gaze. “So why can’t I remember--”

Bill paused for a moment.

Then he was up out of his chair and screaming at Ford in the face in a full-on fury.

“-- _ **WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?!?!?**_ ”

Ford looked down at him levelly, and didn’t so much as flinch in the face of Bill’s anger.

He didn’t say one word.

“You-- You--” Bill spluttered, his body half-swaying, half-twitching, as his eyes went in and out of focus, repeatedly. “-- _You **idiot!!**_ ” he screeched out next, and Ford didn’t realize that Bill had lunged at him until after his reflexes, honed from years of interdimensional travel and threats of all types, had already jumped him backwards five feet away from Bill, with his gun from the table retrieved and in-hand. That wasn’t really a surprise, though.

What he was somewhat surprised by, was to find that Stanley had somehow managed to wrap his arms around Cipher’s torso and arms in the meantime, that he was holding Bill back.

He’d have thought Stanley would have punched Bill instead.

“You _son of a--_ ” Bill continued to screech at him, straining against Stanley’s hold.

“--Bill, stop it,” Stanley told him in a normal speaking tone of voice, and Ford had a feeling of disconnect. ‘ _I must be two seconds away from having some sort of brain aneurysm_ ,’ he thought, for Stanley to be coming across to him as sounding so sure that _Bill Cipher would actually listen to him right now_. “Calm down, and just breathe--”

Bill let out a laugh that sounded like it was more than halfway to becoming a scream.

“You-- you want me to _breathe?!?_ ” he told Stanley, craning his neck to stare up at him incredulously. “You-- ha ha, you have _no idea_ , do you?” Bill said, as Ford slowly shifted into a less defensive pose. He could hardly believe that Bill had actually _stopped_ \-- was actively _talking_ with Stanley right now. ‘ _\--How did Stanley do that?_ ’

“Oh, _of course_ you don’t,” Bill continued on, oblivious to Ford’s stunned silence. “How could you? You--” Ford watched Bill shudder in place, not fighting Stanley’s hold now, almost leaning up against him instead. “ **It wasn’t _my_ name he typed into that gun, Stanley,** ” Bill said dangerously, before dropping his head back down to snarl out at Ford, “ **now, was it, _Sixer?!_** ”

“What?” Stanley said, looking down at Bill in confusion.

“That gun,” Bill said. “The **memory gun**. It’s not a _toy_ ,” Bill said, like he was gathering up steam. “It’s not a magic lamp, it doesn’t grant _wishes_ ,” he ground out. “It doesn’t have an _advanced AI system_ to _guess at what you want_ ,” Bill continued, and Ford was starting to get a sinking feeling in his gut. Bill seemed to twist his shoulders down almost predatorially, almost like he wanted to physically launch himself at Ford, like he wanted to _tackle_ him to the ground and stomp on him.

“It uses your _own mind_ against you,” Bill spat out, glaring at Ford. “It doesn’t work on its own,” Bill told-- _explained_ to _Stanley_ \-- dear god, what had he missed in those three hours he’d been asleep?! “You type something in, some symbolic concept into words, and you shoot that beam at someone, and it tells that person _what to forget_ ,” Bill continued on in a level tone of voice, but it was clear that he was not much calmer than before, Ford could see him shaking with suppressed rage from halfway across the room. “It has to be in the same language, preferably in their own words,” Bill continued on, “and Fordsy here didn’t type ‘Bill Cipher’ into that memory gun, **now did he?** ” Bill said, almost sing-song but in a much lower, more dangerous tone of voice, eyed fixed on him.

“No, no,” Bill said, shifting slightly in place, twisting a little like his skin didn’t fit him quite right anymore, as he ranted and raged. “Not Sixer. He’s _smart_ , right? He’s not sure if that’s really my name, if that’s what I call myself inside my own mentality,” he said in an almost conversational tone, while his lips curled up into a snarl again. “And he wanted to be _sure_ he’d gotten rid of me, all of me. He had to be _sure and certain_ of it,” Bill said. “But, this dumb genius, oh no, he couldn’t just type in ‘everything and everyone’ like anyone _else_ with half-a-brain,” Bill said, and Ford felt like his stomach was full of lead, felt it sink into the floor.

“That would be too _easy_ ,” Bill continued on, hammering it home, Ford’s mistake. “That would have _actually worked_ ,” and Ford couldn’t help but flinch hard at that. “But no, oh no, Sixer couldn’t do _that_ ,” Bill continued on, straightening in place, as Stanley’s grip loosened on him. “That would have required, oh, I don’t know. What’s the word I’m looking for here, Stanley…?” Bill said tauntingly.

“...Common sense,” Ford’s brother answered him hollowly.

“That’s right,” Bill said with a bloody sort of satisfaction, leaning forward slightly and baring his teeth at Ford. “ _Common sense_.”

Ford shuddered slightly.

“So, _instead_ ,” Bill continued on, “This _genius_ here decided to, ha ha, do the dumbest thing imaginable!” Bill said. “Sixer here, with that big ol’ genius brain of his, decided that the _smart_ thing to do would be to kill _you_ ,” Bill said, fists clenched, “and _hope_ he somehow got all of _me_ in the process, that killing you that way would drag me down with you. He didn’t type ‘Bill Cipher’ into that gun, Stanley,” Bill said, and Ford wanted to scream at him to _stop_ , but his throat was closed up and his head felt light and he could barely breathe as it was. “He didn’t type in ‘Bill Cipher’, he didn’t type in ‘everything and everyone’, he didn’t type in anything else that might’ve even been the _least_ bit useful,” Bill said, and Ford watched Bill tilt his head to the side, staring him down and, all the while, some small part of Ford’s brain simply could not understand _why_ Bill Cipher seemed to be so pissed. “No, instead he typed _your_ name in, Stanley,” Ford heard Bill say. “He typed ‘Stanley Pines’ into that gun, and he killed you that day. And me?” Bill shivered a moment, and then he just laughed.

Bill didn’t really sound like himself, not completely. In some ways, he sounded a lot more like _Stanley_ did when he was angry, and when Ford realized this, that small part of Ford’s brain that hadn't understood where the anger was coming from collapsed in on itself a bit and said, ‘oh...’

There was a long pregnant pause, where Bill was glaring at Ford, standing all his full current height, head back, fists clenched and looking nearly incandescent with rage, and Ford couldn’t look away from him for fear of what he might see on his own _brother’s_ face if he did.

“...Dumbest genius I ever met,” Stanley said finally, his voice wavering. Oddly enough, there was the faintest bit of a smile in it.

Ford slowly looked up, to see that faint smile on Stanley’s face.

Hope flared and wavered a bit in his chest, like a flickering light.

“Yeah, I died,” Stanley agreed with Bill, talking slowly. “I remember that. ...But hey, it still worked, right?” Stanley said, looking down at Bill, who was standing in front of him. “Stopped _you_ , didn’t it?”

Ford watched Bill’s face drop suddenly into expressionlessness.

He watched Bill close his eyes.

He watched as Bill slowly turned his head to look up at Stanley.

...He didn’t look any less angry for it.

“No, Stanley,” Bill said, like he was explaining something to someone who was being as willfully thick as he had claimed Ford to be acting earlier. “It _didn’t_ work.”

Ford looked on as Stanley’s shoulders dropped slightly.

He saw Stanley’s look of growing confusion.

He saw Stanley frown stubbornly.

“Yes, it did,” said Stanley.

“Stanley, the memory gun didn’t stop me,” Bill told Stanley, Ford’s brother, the man Stanford Pines shared a face with, simply and slowly: “You did.”

Ford stared. Stanley stared.

“Pull the other one,” Stanley told Bill.

Bill let his breath out through his nose.

He turned around to fully-face Stanley head-on.

“ _You_ ,” he said, poking Stanley in the chest, “were rolling around on the _floor_ , fighting with Sixer when I floated in. The entire circle was in disarray! I-- I doubt I’d thought you’d managed to hold hands for _two seconds_ with the rest of them, and I’d bet you anything that I was _right_.” Ford saw Bill tilt his head up slightly, and got the distinct feeling that Bill was narrowing his eyes at his brother. “In completely the wrong way,” Bill continued, sounding rather frustrated with himself, “Because you _didn’t_ hold hands with everyone for two seconds, now, did you?” Bill said ponderously, “You held them for a solid **five**.”

Ford felt like he was underwater. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning on dry land, and he had to shoot Bill, because _Bill was lying_ \-- Bill couldn't possibly be implying what he seemed to be implying, that the memory gun had been _unnecessary_ , Ford had _had_ to pull the trigger on his brother, he hadn't _wanted_ to -- but Ford couldn’t raise his arms to shoot him, everything _hurt_ too much.

‘No,’ Ford tried to mouth out despite the rising pressure wrapping itself like bands around his chest, but Stanley wasn't looking at him. He was staring down at Bill.

“Five seconds of that wouldn’t have been enough for any of the kids to be able to stand up to me in the mindscape; they’re all too young, too fluid,” Bill continued on, slow and relentless as the sea tide coming in. “I’m pretty sure at this point that the only reason why Pine Tree, Shooting Star, and Question Mark got any traction in the mindscape against me _at all_ , the one time that they did it, was because... --it was _your_ head, _your_ rules, right? You _liked_ them, so you would’ve been bolstering them all up,” Bill told him. “And don’t get me started on the other kids; Red's got all _sorts_ of issues going on upstairs, and the rest are cowards and traitors all three! No, none of the kids could have done it, even with a bit of a Zodiac boost.”

But Bill wasn’t done there. “Five seconds in the circle wouldn’t have made up the difference between what they had and what you would have given them when they’d been in your mind -- and they hadn't really stopped me in there, anyway,” Bill tossed out there. “And I still could have snapped Glasses’ mind like a _twig_ just by staring at him too hard, circle or no circle, no matter the duration of the charge.” He stopped and took in a breath. “Sixer? Well, we’ve got **history** ,” he said. “I could’ve broken him, _easily_ ,” Bill said, with the start of a nasty smile in his voice, and Ford tried to find the strength in him to protest.

But before he could, Bill stopped. He ticked his head to the side a bit and then shook it roughly, like the thought had started to give him a headache. And Ford shivered, feeling dizzy and sick, but was at least a little bit grateful -- though he would never admit it -- that Bill hadn’t continued on for a bit in that vein.

“...And me?” Stanley said quietly, frowning down at him. “What makes _me_ so special, huh? …Hah. ‘Special’. _Me._ Yeah, right.” Stanley shook his own head at Bill. “I’m not--”

“--Not _what_ , a ‘hero’?” Bill said derisively. “Who said you ever needed to be? Counterproductive,” he waved off. “ _You_ , Stanley Pines,” Bill said, tossing out a hand to his side, encompassing the Shack and the basement all in one gesture, “Worked days and nights for _thirty years_ , and out of stubbornness and an absolute _refusal_ to give up and bend, ha! --Out of **sheer will alone** you _forced_ your way through absolutely _everything_ that had to be accomplished to do what you _needed_ to do, and you got that portal working again,” and Bill was angry, oh yes, but he was also smiling, Ford could _hear it_ in his voice.

Stanley backed up a step, and Bill followed him.

“And that’s not counting the ten years before _that_ ,” Bill continued, and Stanley backed up another step, Bill following, swaying a little almost. “Or the seventeen years _before that_ ,” and Bill was _grinning_ now, Ford could hear it in his tone.

Ford saw Stanley swallow hard, and when Stanley’s legs hit the kitchen table and he sat down hard on it, when Bill slammed his hands down on either side of his brother on the flat surface of the table and _leaned in real close_ , Ford felt his earlier rage return with a vengeance, and he quivered in place. He felt the strength return to his muscles, his arms and legs flex, and he moved forward like a shot released from a crossbow as he heard Bill purr out almost _happily_ , “Stanley, I’ve seen more experienced _mages_ with less--” and that was it, Bill was done, Ford was _not_ going to let him manipulate his brother this way! Ford grabbed him by the back of his collar and hauled him away from his brother, because _how dare he--!_

Bill choked, and Ford shoved the muzzle of his gun up against the side of Bill’s head.

“He’s _lying_ ,” he told Stanley angrily and succinctly, because that was what Bill _did_. He lied with selective truths, and he got you to _trust_ him, and then he told you things that made you think you were better than you were, and then he _used_ you, and _then_ he made you _hurt_. That was what Bill did, and he would _die_ before he saw his brother put through that, right in front of him! “He’s lying about--”

“Ha!” Bill grinned as he twisted slightly in Ford’s grasp, grabbing onto Ford’s wrist behind his head. “Your answer to _everything_ , right Sixer? Don’t like something? That’s okay -- Bill _has_ to be _lying!_ ” He let out another choked laugh as Ford shook him, half throttling Bill with the collar of his own shirt.

“No,” Stanley said, staring at, and also somehow a little past Bill. He pressed his own hands to the table surface, curled his fingers over the edges, and Ford had seen this look on him before, when he was about to remember something. “No, he’s not wrong.”

Ford felt his stomach sink. “What?” He tried to shake it off. “No, Stanley, that’s not--”

“He put me back together, Ford,” Stanley told him slowly, still staring at Bill.

“What?” Ford said, startled.

“He put me back together,” Stanley repeated, still staring. “He was confused, but…” Stanley swallowed. “I’m pretty sure it was him. Not me.”

“Stanley--”

“Wasn’t much left of him,” Stanley said. “Not after I punched him.”

“Confused is an understatement!” Bill said, with a laugh.

“Pieces went everywhere,” Stanley said. “He just disintegrated.”

“Reeling was more like it,” Bill said in parallel, head tilted back, eyes wide and staring.

“Almost none of him was _there_ anymore,” said Stanley. “Nothing to put _him_ back together, around anyplace we could reach.”

“Must’ve been the summoning ceremony later, that pulled all of my energy back into one place, for me to be able to have it all back again now,” Bill said, suddenly and oddly in sync with Stanley again.

“We didn’t even know we were a ‘we’ instead of an ‘I’,” Stanley said, shoulders slumping a bit.

“Didn’t even guess at it until later,” said Bill, swaying in place.

“And then we thought that maybe it was ‘old me’ and ‘new me’,” Stanley said grimly, staring off into space. “But we didn’t want to worry you,” Stanley continued.

“Bad enough when you were already worrying over us maybe-eventually being possessed by an evil dream demon from within someday,” Bill said with zero irony, caught up in the recollection just as badly as Stanley was, and Ford nearly let go of him in fear. “But if you’d known we'd ended up crazy? With two of us instead of one?”

It was about that point that Ford wanted to start clawing out his own brain, or maybe scream at them both to _stop_. ...He couldn’t do that, though. He had to let this run its course, just like every other memory lapse and rebuild that Stanley had been through before this.

\--Hence the nearly overwhelming urge to scream, because if Bill had actually been a part of this, all this time… putting pieces of Ford’s own brother back together _the way **he** wanted to_ …

Ford was going to throw up after this. ...And probably have nightmares for a solid week.

But for now… all Ford could really do _now_ was keep a firm grip on Bill, until Stanley had managed to work his way out of this, _in Bill’s presence and with his input_ , as much as Ford wanted to run away screaming instead.

Someday, he knew, he wasn’t going to be able to help himself, and he’d end up asking Fiddleford if this was anything like what had driven him to wipe his brain of his memories: the desperate screaming need to get rid of the feelings they provoked. ...And then he’d have to apologize to his friend, all over again.

“Didn’t know which one of us was the most real,” said Stanley. “We figured we’d figure it out eventually. Who really came first, and which one of us we didn’t get quite right. Who was supposed to be there, and who would bow out.”

Ford swallowed hard. ...Yes. _Definitely_ nightmares for a solid week, if not longer.

“Didn’t know what to do at the start, trying to rebuild everything,” Bill said with a frown. “The ceiling was the floor. And the floor was who-knows-where? And what were the _walls_ supposed to be, anyway? And the roof? And all those _doors??_ ” Bill’s frown deepened. “ _Nothing_ felt familiar.”

“Didn’t feel right,” Stanley confirmed.

“Still,” Bill said, both eyes now on Stanley. “I had to do _something_.”

“Yeah,” Stanley breathed out. “You had to start somewhere.”

“Got ‘Stanford’s memories back first,” Bill said, to Ford’s growing horror at his classification of them. “Summer with the kids, everything above-ground.”

“The Shack,” Stanley said quietly, _not correcting Bill in the slightest_.

“Stan Pines. ‘Grunkle Stan’ -- not Stanley, never Stanley,” Bill said, and Ford went absolutely rigid. He watched Bill’s eyes get a laser-like, knowing focus. “Next came the ten years. Got that out of a box of _scraps_ ,” he said, eyes narrowing.

“Took the longest to get back the seventeen,” Stanley said. “And then the basement.”

“Even _with_ the home movies,” Bill said with no small anger, looking away. “Because _that_ was ‘Stanley Pines’,” Bill finished, like he was confirming something that he and Stanley already knew.

Stanley closed his eyes and sighed. He looked bone-deep _tired_.

When he opened them again, he was looking at Ford.

“You really did type my name into the memory gun, didn't you,” he said to Ford.

Ford had never told Stanley that piece of information in helping him in getting his memories back; the event had been painful, he hadn’t ever thought the detail relevant enough to include, and the kids hadn’t seen the screen. Nobody _really_ knew it for sure but him, and _he_ had a metal plate in his head to prevent mind reading and other tampering.

...And for an insane moment, Ford knew that he was going to tell a sheer and bold-faced lie, was utterly certain that he needed to. Because it was the right thing to do. Bill was lying to Stanley about so many things, Bill _had_ to be, and Ford had to lie to Stanley to protect him. Because if Ford told Stanley the truth, that he’d put his name into the gun, when he’d left it out before, Stanley would trust _Bill_ over _him_ and…

...and...

“Yes,” Ford said instead, feeling about two inches tall. Because he couldn’t lie to his brother. Not about this. Not after already having lost him once. He’d promised to always tell him the truth when it came to his memories, no matter how painful. Even if it meant he risked losing him again.

Stanley had told him that as long as Ford told him the truth, he wouldn’t.

“You typed in ‘Stanley Pines’,” Stanley said.

“Yes,” said Ford, feeling more than a little scared as he looked away from his brother, unable to meet his eyes.

Looking away from Stanley, he looked over at Bill.

Bill was staring at Stanley again, clear-eyed and focused. Watching him. Like a _hawk_. Like he was _waiting_ for something.

Ford heard his brother draw in a slow breath.

And Ford shook Bill _hard_ , because he wasn’t _about_ to let Bill get it, _whatever_ it was that he was waiting for.

“Glkk!” went Bill, as Ford proceeded to shake him like a wet rag, and then didn’t.

Because he could. Because Stanley had finished his recollection, was out of the woods now as part-and-parcel of that, and now...

Ford dragged Bill in closer, readjusted his hold to Bill’s front instead of the scruff of his neck, and got right up in Bill’s face.

“ _Do I have your attention **now** , Cipher?!_” he demanded of Bill, dangerous and low, shoving his gun up under Bill’s chin, hard enough to force his head back.

Bill grabbed onto his wrist, breathing hard, glaring up at him, eyes wide before they narrowed, lips pulling back from teeth like he was ready to bite him, like a feral animal.

“F-Ford, what--??” he heard Stanley say almost weakly at his side, still reeling and confused from his own recent mental stress, but Ford didn’t let up now. He _couldn’t_.

Because it was better by _far_ to have Bill’s attention on _him_. Safer for Stanley, certainly. Safer for everyone.

He was angry at himself for letting things get this far, angry at the world for allowing this to happen, angry that he’d had to choose between standing by and _watching_ as Cipher had interjected himself into Stanley’s mental reconstruction or risk his brother’s mind fragmenting again under the strain of an interrupted recollection, just-- _angry_.

And he felt that he had a right to be.

...And he also had a legitimate target for his anger right here in front of him: Cipher himself.

Because if it hadn’t been for _Bill Cipher_...

Ford had to fight to keep his own lips from pulling back from his teeth in a snarl.

“You didn’t answer my question from before, _Bill_ ,” Ford told him, voice hard, and let’s just see who liked being messed with _now_. “When did you make a deal with my brother?”

“What?” Bill said, off-balance and staring up at him.

“No more lies, and no more redirections!” Ford demanded. “ _When did you make a deal with my brother!_ ”

“I-- I _called that deal off!_ ” Bill said, shaking his head back and forth hard. “In the Fearamid, I called the deal--”

“BEFORE THAT!!” Ford yelled at him, shaking him by the collar again, and he was certain he was right about this, so certain, because the way Bill had talked, the way he had kept twitching away from certain things--

\--like hurting him, and like killing Mabel--

Just like Bill couldn’t get inside a person’s body without shaking their hand, there were other rules that Bill had to follow as a dream demon. One of him was that he could not lie **directly** to people about something.

...He could shy away from things. He could change the subject; redirect. He could answer a question with a question, laugh things off as a joke, and leave horrendously large pieces of key information out of an explanation entirely. _But._ Direct questions required direct answers, and those, Bill _couldn’t squirm out of_. --Not if you didn’t let him, that is, and Ford wasn’t _about_ to let him get away with it this time.

“You made a deal with Stanley about the portal and the kids, _didn’t you?!_ ” Ford yelled at him.

“What-- _Ford??_ ” he heard Stanley say next to him.

“That’s not--” Bill began.

Ford shook him again. “You made a deal with Stanley about the portal and the kids, _didn’t you?!_ ” he repeated, verbatim. Because Ford knew his brother, and he wouldn’t have made a deal with Bill if it hadn’t included an absolute assurance of the kids’ safety. One that Bill could _not_ deviate from. It would explain so much.

It would explain _everything_.

“I d-didn’t-- I d-don’t--”

Ford heard the slight verbal tic and caught the change in pupillary reaction, and with no small satisfaction he holstered his gun, grabbed Bill with both hands, and _shook him again_.

“FORD!” Stanley yelled at him, grabbing him by the shoulder, but Ford wasn’t about to let up on Bill now.

Ford wasn’t about to let up on the pressure, because he’d seen the tics the memory gun left behind enough times now to know and recognize the symptoms for what they were -- and he’d had to deal with Bill _stalking him through other dimensions long enough_ and _gloating at him_ over things and _still toying with him_ year after year, before he’d gotten the metal plate in his head, and again-and-still _warping_ his dreams night-after-night after that, to know when Bill was being _straightforward_ with him, and when Bill was _not_ \-- and by the Axolotl, he was not about to let up on Bill now. Not until he got a straight answer out of the insane triangle, no, not on this, not even if it _killed_ him.

And Bill might’ve been affected by the memory gun in this, yes, but Ford _didn’t_ have to be gentle to get what he needed out of _Bill_.

The facts were clear. Bill had made a deal with his brother at some point, almost certainly to do with saving Ford via the portal, because that was the only thing Stanley would ever have asked Bill for -- Ford’s safety, and the kid’s safety, too. And the memory gun had burned the details of ‘Stanley Pines’ straight out of Bill’s mentality while he’d been inside of Stanley’s mind, _just like it did to anyone else_. It had worked on Bill, just like it worked on anyone else’s mind, and it was no small wonder that Bill _hated_ the gun so much because of this.

“You made a deal with Stanley about the portal and the kids, _didn’t you?!_ ” Ford yelled at Bill again, right in his face.

“I-- nngn!” he heard Bill say, as he gave a full-body flinch away from Ford and grabbed at the side of his skull with his right hand, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Ford, stop, he--” From the tone of Stanley’s voice, though, and the way the pressure on his shoulder changed, Ford knew his brother had finally realized what he had -- that the memory gun _had_ had a very significant impact on Bill’s mind, and that Ford was forcing Bill through a bad episode right now to get at what he hadn’t yet remembered.

“He made a _deal_ with you, Stanley,” Ford said coldly. “He made a deal with you and the memory gun burned it away, and I am _going_ to _make_ him admit it.”

“Ford, geez, _I_ don’t remember any deal with him!” Stanley said shakily, sounding off-put.

“You wouldn’t,” Ford said grimly, “if Bill,” he shook Bill again, “made it part of the _terms_ of the deal,” he shook him again, “that you wouldn’t remember _making_ the deal with him _after the fact!_ ” He shook him _again_ , even harder.

Bill made a strangled sound, and couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether to try and hold onto Ford’s wrists, or to clutch at his own skull.

Ford felt a perverse, almost guilty pleasure at having broken Bill this far down already, in such a short period of time.

And oh, did Bill deserve this.

“Ford…” he heard Stan say in warning tones, his grip on his shoulder tightening. “This isn’t how you--”

“I know what I’m doing, Stanley,” he told his brother authoritatively. “Besides, he’s a ‘master of the mind’, isn’t he?” he directed at Bill, giving Bill another shake. “So he can _certainly_ handle something as simple as **this** , _right Bill?_ ”

Bill gritted his teeth in response and lost his footing for a moment, and by this point he seemed to have finally decided upon hanging onto Ford’s wrists with both hands, not even trying to clutch at his skull anymore.

He also looked like he had a hell of a headache going on.

\-- _Good!_ That would mean he would be far less likely to be able to pull anything out of his usual assortment tricks -- not if he couldn’t concentrate anything like well enough to use them.

“St-stanl--” Bill started to get out, sounding strangled, and Ford gave him a single hard shake again.

“Ford!” Stanley protested, squeezing his shoulder again.

Ford didn’t let that stop him this time, either. He knew he was right.

Bill started to rotate his head in his brother’s direction. Ford didn’t let him.

“Bill,” Ford said firmly, with another firm shake, forcing Bill’s attention to refocus on him and his words alone. “You made a deal with _Stanley_ about the **portal** and the **kids** , _didn’t you?!_ ” he repeated.

And then Ford clenched his fists in Bill’s jacket like he was about to shake him again without waiting for a response.

“-- _I didn’t!_ ” Bill cried out almost immediately, scrabbling at Ford’s wrists, almost dangling in his grasp. Bill was having trouble standing by this point, and Ford stared at him incredulously, because he couldn’t believe that-- “I _didn’t_ make a deal with Stanley about the portal or the kids,” Bill blurted out desperately, “I made it with him about--” Bill started to say, then choked on air and staggered in place, his legs almost giving out on him.

Ford stared down at Bill.

And then Ford began to smile.

Stanley was staring.

His hand dropped away from Ford’s shoulder.

“I-- I made it with him about--” Bill repeated almost mindlessly. “I-- I made it with-- I--” He nearly lost his footing again. Ford dragged him upright with a grimace, let Bill lean forward a bit, to support some of Bill’s weight on his arms.

Bill didn’t seem to notice. Bill’s eyes were large, and he was staring blindly at this point. “I-- I made a deal with… _Stanley?_ ” he said, swaying side to side and looking almost… lost.

Ford waited.

“I-- I m-made a _deal_ with S-stanl--” Bill cut off, almost doubled over as his legs gave out again, but Ford pulled him upright _again_.

“Stand up,” he told Bill. “Tell me, what did you make this deal _about?_ ”

“I--” Bill said. “I made--” He staggered. “I made-- made-- made--” He started to jerk in place.

“Bill, what was the deal about?” Ford demanded, and Bill jerked in place again.

“Can’t--” he jerked in place. “Can’t-- can’t--”

“Ford...”

“Bill, _what was the deal about?_ ” Ford repeated, holding him by the upper torso, completely off of his feet.

“Can’t--” Bill stuttered. “C-can’t--” His head hung back on his neck, and his fingers were spasming around Ford’s wrists, barely hanging on. One of his hands dropped to his side to dangle there loosely.

“ _Bill!_ ” Ford yelled at him.

“Ford, you need to stop…” Stanley said, sounding uneasy.

“ _Not yet_ ,” Ford gritted out. “ **\--BILL!** ”

“I--” Bill looked like he was gasping for breath. “I c-can’t--”

“Yes, you _can_ ,” Ford gritted out. “Stanley can’t; you _can_.”

“N-no,” was the next word that came out of Bill’s mouth.

“What?” said Ford.

“Ford, put him down,” he heard Stanley say, but it barely registered, he was too fixated on what Bill had just said.

“N-nn--” Bill began, eyelids fluttering almost closed for a moment, and the hand he still had barely holding onto his wrist spasmed again, just once.

Ford saw the exact moment that something like lucidity entered Bill’s eyes again, when his eyes shot open and he blindly stared up at the ceiling.

“No,” Bill said almost clearly, a look of horror dawning across his face for some reason. “I can’t t-talk about i-it... _wi-i-i-th_...” was all that Bill got out in scared, rapidly-rising tones, before his words cut off again. Bill’s eyes widened and his pupils contracted as he choked on air again.

“What?” Ford said, nonplussed. “You can’t _talk about it?_ ”

And it was then that Bill’s hand fell away from his wrist limply, his eyes rolled back into his head, and all trace of personality completely vanished off of his face.

And then Bill’s body began convulsing **violently** in Ford’s grasp.

“Put him down-- _put him down NOW!_ ” Stanley yelled, grabbing Bill and forcibly ripping him out of Ford’s hold.

Stanley pulled Bill down to the floor and nearly wrapped himself around him, cursing all the while.

Ford couldn’t do anything but stare. His mind was near blank.

_Bill made a deal with Stanley that **he can’t talk about?!**_

It hadn’t even occurred to Ford that that might even be _possible_. Because... how could Bill _collect_ on a deal that he couldn’t bring up or talk about with anyone?! How could he even _accept_ that deal in the first place, having _already_ talked about it, because he would have already had to have discussed that deal with the dealmaker to begin with? And even if he somehow managed _all that_ , how could Bill possibly hold up his own end of the deal without someone finding out what he was doing, up to and including the dealmaker who would be on the receiving end of what they’d dealed for, when Bill couldn’t lie to them about the reasons why he’d be giving something they wanted? How could he be sure he’d be able to convince them to take whatever was being offered to settle the deal, without suspicion?

\--And, more importantly, how in the world was Ford supposed to protect Stanley from the consequences of one of Bill’s bad deals, when Stanley couldn’t _remember_ the deal, Bill couldn't _talk_ about it, and _no-one else knew about it?!?_

“Kid, you didn’t say _anything!_ ” he heard Stanley telling Bill urgently, as Bill’s body continued to convulse, and he cradled Bill’s head in one arm. “You didn’t say anything, you hear me? You didn’t talk about any deal, you didn’t say anything that made any sense at all, you didn’t talk about anything with either one of us -- with _anyone_! Me and Ford have _no idea_ what you just said!”

Ford wasn’t sure exactly what did it, but sometime between when Stanley started talking and when he ended, Bill’s body stopped spasming, _and he started breathing again_.

Ford slowly dropped down onto his knees next to Stanley.

“Stanley,” Ford said quietly, feeling more than a little shaky just then.

“You done?” he heard Stanley growl out at him, and Ford flinched.

“What?” Ford said.

“Are. You. _Done._ ” Stanley growled out at him, turning to look over his shoulder at him, and the look on Stanley’s face--

Stanley was the angriest that Ford had ever seen him.

“I--” Ford began.

“Or maybe I should, I don’t know, prepare myself for _round two?_ ” Stanley growled out in a voice full of gravel, as his arms tightened more protectively around Bill’s body.

Ford stared at him for a moment before frowning.

“Stanley, we need to know--”

“--No, Ford, we _don’t_ ,” Stanley told him, looking down at Bill again.

Ford stared at his own brother, aghast.

“Stanley,” he began, trying to be reasonable, but talking to him hotly instead -- he truly couldn’t help it, he was _worried_ \-- “I can’t protect you from him if I don’t know--!”

Stanley let out a bark of a laugh. “Pretty sure _I’m_ not the one who needs protecting here, Ford,” Stanley told him, and it felt like a slap in the face.

“Stanley--”

“I never should’ve let you touch him,” Stanley said, looking down at Bill. He took in a breath. “I never should have let you _near_ him.” He looked up at Ford again. “You said you knew what you were doing,” he said, in a voice full of accusation.

“I did!” Ford said. “I do.”

“Yeah?” Stanley said, glaring at him straight-on. “So you _knew_ he was gonna start seizing up like that?” he asked.

“I--”

“--Just like you _knew_ that, what, my shoulder was gonna hurt when we did the Zodiac thing?” Stanley shot at him next. “‘Cause I gotta tell you, Ford, it would’a been nice to have had some _warning_ ,” he gritted out.

Ford fell silent.

“I’m sorry, Stanley,” Ford said quietly.

“No,” said Stanley. “I really don’t think you are.”

“Stan--”

“No,” Stanley repeated, looking back down at Bill again. He clenched his jaw, then looked away.

“I screwed up,” Stanley said.

“What?” Ford said, adjusting his glasses, thinking that he could not possibly have heard his brother correctly.

“I screwed up,” Stanley said. “ _Again._ Just like I always do. Old, screw-up me.”

“Stanley, you are _not_ a screw-up!” Ford protested hotly.

“ _Yes, I am_ ,” Stanley said, sounding tired and irritated. “Apparently I was stupid or _desperate_ enough to make a deal with Bill at some point and, what, he almost _dies_ trying to keep it a secret for me?” He looked up at Ford, and Ford suddenly realized that Stanley wasn’t just mad, he was mad and scared and everything else in-between.

“Stanley--”

“I saw your face when he said it, Ford,” Stanley said, barreling forward. “That’s not a normal deal thing, him not talking about it,” Stan said, “Right?”

Ford grimaced and looked away. “No, but--”

“--Then I must’ve been the one who asked him for it,” Stanley said. “To not talk about it. Which means it’s my fault.”

“Your… fault?” Ford said, nonplussed. “Stanley, what are you talking about?”

Stanley worked his jaw, looking away from Ford again, then turning back to give him a grim look.

“You used _me_ to get to _him_ ,” Stanley told him.

Ford felt a chill go down his spine.

“You almost _killed_ him,” Stanley continued, and at least that was something Ford could protest.

“He deserves it!” Ford pointed out, and Stanley looked at him incredulously.

“Ford, I used to work for the _Colombian mob_ ,” Stanley told him, “And I’m pretty sure that I would rather have _them_ put me in concrete boots and toss me off the short end of a pier, than have anybody do to _me_ what you just did to _him!_ ”

“You don’t deserve it! You-- haven’t killed anybody!” Ford protested, with the first easy thing that came to mind that he knew that his brother had never sunk to doing.

“Neither has he!” was the very last response that he’d expected to hear out of Stanley in return.

“He’s killed _entire dimensions_ of people!!” Ford told him, all but yelling at his younger twin.

Stan looked at him without any change in expression.

“I don’t care about other dimensions,” Stanley told him, “He hasn’t killed anyone _here_.” At Ford's incredulous look, which he misinterpreted, he added, “It’s a small town, Ford, and I’ve been living here long enough that I know everybody in Gravity Falls. There were no funerals. Nobody died.”

Ford took in a breath and let it out slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He forced himself to let it go, to not protest that by ‘not caring about other dimensions’, Stanley was doing what amounted to basically letting Bill off the hook for trillions of deaths. Ford knew it would be pointless to try and debate the ethics of it though, because that was Stanley for you. He cared about his family, and them alone, not other people. 

“You really think the town’d be able to get away with their ‘Never Mind All That’ act if anybody’d died?” Stanley continued. And Stanley had the audacity to look frustrated at this for some reason, looking away from him. “Guy throws a huge apocalypse--”

“Weirdmageddon, Stanley,” Ford corrected him, feeling bone-deep tired.

Stanley gave him a _look_. “Fine,” he said, “The triangle throws a huge crazy weird-ma-whatsis, and somehow, ‘magically’,” Stanley said, raising his hands and wiggling his fingers about sarcastically, “ _nobody_ in town dies? That doesn’t say something to you?”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying, Stanley!” Ford pointed out angrily.

“Right,” Stanley said. “Guy literally _lights the town on fire_ , tosses _hordes_ of scary-creepy whatsits at us out of a big hole in the sky, along with a big bunch of not-so-friendly talking alien monsters who say things like ‘they like killing entire moons of people for fun’ or whatever, and _nobody dies,_ ” Stanley repeated, looking over at him. “ _And_ everything in town, except the Shack, is _also_ ‘magically’ completely back to normal after the end of everything. --And that’s what he gets ‘for trying’?” Stanley told him sarcastically.

“Stanley--” Ford began.

“The town was worse off after the portal reactivated, and I wasn’t even trying to wreck anything, turning it on,” Stanley told him bluntly. “ _He_ crashes into town, through a freaking tear in reality itself, and everything goes back to normal afterwards. _That doesn’t seem awfully suspicious to you?_ ”

Ford let out a sigh of frustration. “I’d call that a miracle, Stanley, and that’s not what I was referring to in the first place,” Ford said, though for the grace of the Axolotl, he _was_ glad that no-one from the town or the forest had perished during Weirdmageddon -- it really was a true miracle, as far as he was concerned. “I was talking about Mabel.”

“Mabel’s alive,” Stanley said, but he sounded curmudgeonly about it, and Ford knew his brother knew what he was getting at.

“Bill tried to kill her and Dipper,” Ford said. “You _know_ that. Bill just outright _admitted_ that he had been planning on killing her _specifically_ , not more than ten minutes ago, and he doesn’t even feel the least bit sorry about it!”

“And then he didn’t kill her,” Stanley said stubbornly.

Ford stared at his brother.

“Ford, he put her in a bubble--” Stanley began.

“--Call it what it was, Stanley,” Ford said tersely, “It was a prison.”

Stanley stopped to take in a breath, and Ford didn’t feel sorry for the low blow he’d dealt there. At. all.

“ _Fine_ ,” Stanley said. “He put Mabel in a prison cell she couldn’t get out of, and then put the cell out there in the wastelands, away from anybody else,” Stanley said, before leaning forward a little. “Where she was _safe_ ,” he told Ford, and Ford started to get an uneasy feeling. Stanley leaned back again. “Where none of any of the unsafe weirdness going on all around the town could get to her. And, she had Gideon, that little rat, guarding her prison cell. And I gotta say, Ford, as far as prison guards go? He was head-over-heels for her, grade-A prime stalker material, three years younger than her and on-the-job 24-7,” and Ford felt a little sick that he was only just hearing about this _now_ \-- hadn’t the boy been in attendance at the niblings’ end-of-summer birthday party the year prior?

But Stanley apparently wasn’t done yet. “There was no way that little jerk would’ve let anything or anyone get past him that might stand a chance of hurting her, not even himself, not even over his own dead body.” Stanley shifted Bill in his lap. “And then Dipper breaks her out of there, and she rips out Bill’s eye once with the Shack--”

“He probably didn’t know that was her and Waddles,” Ford interjected.

“--and then spraypaints the triangle right in the eye in the middle of that creepy floating pyramid,” Stan continued on without missing a beat. “And when she tries to run, Bill goes and grabs her all threatening and angry as all get out. ...And then he _still doesn’t want to kill her_ , he just _can’t remember_ right now why he **didn’t** want to. So. Should I be preparing for round two because you need to know _that?_ ” Stanley asked him, crossing his arms and glaring at him.

Despite what Stanley might think of him, Ford was capable of recognizing aggressive body language and reading the mood of the room. He could pick his battles.

“No,” Ford said tersely, “I’m sure that I can find that out some other way--”

“So, what, you _don’t_ care about the niblings’ safety more than my own? ‘Cause, I gotta tell ya, _priorities_ , Ford.”

“-- _What do you **want** from me, Stanley!?!_ ” Ford yelled out at his brother, completely losing his temper, finally.

“I _want_ you to trust me, that I know what I’m doing!” Stanley yelled back at him.

“That you--” Ford spluttered. “What in the world are you _talking_ about, Stanley?!”

Stanley rubbed a hand over his face.

“I’m talking about the triangle, Ford,” he said.

“Stanley--”

“I _warned you off him_ ,” Stanley said in angry tones, but when he dropped his hand away from his face he looked dead tired, even though he had steel in his eyes.

“He was talking about--”

“ _I know what he was talking about, Ford,_ ” Stanley ground out, glaring at him. “I had him inside my head for nine months straight, and then got to talk to him for three hours straight outside of it.” He pulled in a breath. “But _you’re_ **so sure** that _you_ know what’s going on with him right now better than I do, _right?_ ”

Ford fell silent at that.

“I asked you to _trust me_ ,” Stanley continued on. “When I tell you you need to stop and let me handle things like that. You _said_ you would trust me, let me handle things, and then wait until I could explain everything afterwards, when I tell you you need to stop.”

“This isn’t the boat, Stanley!” Ford protested. “This is _Bill Cipher_ we’re talking about, and--”

“--It shouldn’t matter!” Stanley said, cutting him off. He ground his teeth and looked away from Ford. He muttered another curse, and got his hands under Bill’s body.

“Stanley--”

“No,” Stanley said. “I-- I’m not talking about this with him lying here unconscious right in front of us.” He looked down at Bill, and seemed to get angry all over again. “I can't even look at you right now,” he told Ford. “Not without--” He cut himself off. “I’m getting him back in bed, and then…” Stanley shook his head.

“I…”

Stanley hoisted Bill’s limp body up in his arms.

“You look _real ugly_ when you’re the bully, you know that Ford?” was his parting shot, as he hefted Bill up and carried him away.

Stanford stayed seated on the floor where he was, feeling gutted, outraged, and lost.

\---


End file.
